RV Park and Campground Briefs

August 8, 2011 by Justin Leighty
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ONTARIO

From the Standard Freeholder, Cornwall, Ontario:

The St. Lawrence Parks Commission has seen a 22% bump, compared to last year, in the number of overnight campsites that have been reserved up until late July.

“Camping is doing very, very well,” says Susan Le Clair, corporate marketing and development officer for the commission. “There seems to be a resurgence in interest in camping. It provides families with a really economical way to take a vacation.”

She also acknowledged that day use has been down “a little” due to the wet spring.

Le Clair thinks last week’s warm weather and the long weekend will help recoup the day use numbers.

The warm summer weather is the main credit for the increase in camper nights, plus a “really great product,” says Le Clair.

IOWA

From the Associated Press:

Iowa officials have reopened the campground at Lewis and Clark State Park near Onawa.

The campground had been closed for almost two months because of flooding along the nearby Missouri River. An official with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says the campground was prepared for flooding but water never reached the campground.

The Missouri River rose to record levels because of higher releases of water from upstream reservoirs. The releases are being scaled back but the river is expected to remain high into fall.

SOUTH CAROLINA

From the Spartanburg Herald Journal:

The law firm of Columbia attorney Dick Harpootlian on Friday (Aug. 5) hand delivered a letter to Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office calling for a criminal investigation into groundwater contamination at the former Hoechst Celanese manufacturing plant in Spartanburg.

Harpootlian and another Columbia attorney, Bert Louthian, are developing a civil lawsuit against the now split-off companies on behalf of more than 70 families from the Cannon’s Campground community.

The letter accuses Hoechst Celanese of illegally and improperly disposing of several dangerous chemicals.

Many families in the community blame the company’s dumping around the former polyester fiber plant site for dozens of cancer cases in the decades since the practice began in the mid-1960s.

The community is located about a mile from the plant site, according to Celanese.

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control officials told about 150 people gathered at a community meeting at Mary Black Hospital Thursday night that the cases do not represent an abnormal clustering of the disease, and that the lingering groundwater contamination at the plant site poses no current public health risk.

UTAH

From the Associated Press:

Crews have contained a 660-acre wildfire and two campgrounds are now open on the Great Salt Lake’s Antelope Island.

Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands spokesman Jason Curry says the fire was started by lightning Thursday night (Aug. 4) and quickly spread.

Curry says crews from Davis County and Hill Air Force Base had the fire under control by Friday morning.

The fire forced the evacuations of about 100 campers from two campgrounds to other parts of the island. The campgrounds were reopened Friday morning.